Lucas Schaefer

I suspect the AI-is-the-future-of-art crowd has never seen a Frederick Wiseman film

Frederick Wiseman, 96, Penetrating Documentarian of Institutions, Dies He exposed abuses in films like “Titicut Follies,” a once-banned portrait of a mental hospital, but ranged widely in subject matter, from a Queens neighborhood to a French restaurant.

Frederick Wiseman, a director whose rigorously objective explorations of social and cultural institutions constitute one of the more revered bodies of work in American documentary filmmaking, died on Monday. He was 96. nyti.ms/4qGpq55

In a year when independent bookstores are (again) proving to be essential champions of free expression, honored to be on the longlist for the James Patterson and @bookshop.org Prize alongside 9 other debuts, all nominated by booksellers.

bookshop.org/info/the-jam...

A huge thank you to all the booksellers who have spread the word about THE SLIP and to readers who have found the book through their local bookshops or Bookshop.org 🥊🥊🥊

In a year when independent bookstores are (again) proving to be essential champions of free expression, honored to be on the longlist for the James Patterson and @bookshop.org Prize alongside 9 other debuts, all nominated by booksellers.

bookshop.org/info/the-jam...

crickets from the free speech crowd, of course

I'm hardly the first person to note this, but it's enormously instructive that our President and his followers saw the message "THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE" and understood it, correctly, as an attack on them

on the balance i think partisan gerrymandering is bad but the only way it ends is if democrats weaponize it against republicans everywhere they can. wiping out republican lawmakers in blue states might bring the GOP to the table to end the practice.

Canceled my Post subscription, not so much in “protest” as just like… it doesn’t make financial sense for me to pay the same subscription price for like 1/3 of what I used to enjoy reading. Like Mr. Bezos I am a businessman

Incredible. They destroyed a great newspaper because they hated the people who actually paid for it and read it so much that they'd rather scrap the paper if they couldn't get Tucker Carlson's audience bsky.app/profile/maxt...

Every time there is a mass layoff I hope people remember that newsletters cannot save us. The Free Press started as a newsletter but came to influence as something more like a newspaper (without the journalism).

We need to somehow invest in media infrastructure, not a thousand little ladders.

Bezos isn't destroying the Washington Post because it isn't profitable. He's destroying the Washington Post because he's calculated that a robust free press threatens the ability of his class to warp society around their interests

All the smartest, best people I know are broke and losing their jobs, while the stupidest, meanest, most vicious and violent people are thriving. It’s awful, and of course it’s just one part of the terrible times we’re in. If you feel as hopeless as I do, go read a story, poem, or essay today.

For a debut novelist, there are *very few* avenues to get noticed. Reviews in major publications are one of them. Grateful to Ron Charles for championing my work and the work of so many up and coming novelists. A huge loss for readers - a huge loss for writers, too.

At a time when critical reading and critical writing is more needed than ever in this country - and when people are hungering for more thoughtful discourse - the @washingtonpost.com decision to gut their books section is distressing and bleak but also very foolish.

2026 Notable Books List Announced: Year’s Best in Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry CHICAGO- The Notable Books Council, first established in 1944, has released the 2026 selections of the Notable Books List, an annual best-of list comprised of twenty six titles written for adult re…

Thanks to the Notable Books Council for including THE SLIP on its Notable Books list 🥊

rusaupdate.org/2026/01/2026...

Equal parts heartening and infuriating to watch small business owners weigh what to do tomorrow with so much thoughtfulness and intention while our corporate leaders remain as morally bankrupt and mediocre as ever.

remember what JD Vance said of the ICE agents that arrested this little boy: “what did you expect them to do?”

passportmagazine.com/passports-be...

Nice to see THE SLIP is @passportmag.bsky.social Airplane Read of the Month! “Ribald and revelatory… a slab of fabulous comic Americana reminiscent of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Pulitzer-winning MIDDLESEX.”

An entire community of thousands, here legally, having been demonized with deranged lies about eating pets, is about to be arbitrarily DECLARED illegal so they can be forcibly ethnically cleansed. I don’t want to hear one more fucking word about comparisons to Nazi Germany being overwrought.

This is a white supremacist paramilitary operation. Their goal—their stated goal!—is to force America to submit to the President's racist domineering vision for the country.

The sooner everybody starts confronting it on the terms that they themselves have stated, the better.

- cancel all EOs
- fire political appointees
- strip clearances
- appoint special prosecutor for DHS
- hire a zillion IGs
- investigate and prosecute crimes
- investigate and refer policy violations for disciplinary action
- recode ICE and CBP jobs out of 1811 series
- revert name changes

From this moment forward (and before, but clearly now):

-If you work for ICE.
-If you vote for money for ICE.

You are complicit. This is the gestapo. You're on the wrong side. You can't pretend not to know.

Nuremberg trials for ICE is the moderate position

MS NOW news crew capturing ICE/DHS agents firing pepper balls, flash bangs, and tear gas at non violent protesters.
file:///C:/Users/Nikki/Downloads/Velshi-2026-01-24.mp4

Everyone protesting in Minnesota has been risking being murdered.

The rest of us Americans can make some fucking phone calls.

That goes for those with Repub senators as well as those of us with Dem senators. All of them.

I’ve been to large protests. The protest today will likely not be record turnout. (It was -22 when I got out the car this morning!) It’s the depth and breadth and *non public* organizing.

school being canceled because the president sent armed thugs to harass and imprison the populace for voting against him should be the biggest domestic scandal in american history

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...